‘’HOT AND WET’’, by Erik L’Heureux
Erik L’Heureux is an American architect and educator based in Singapore since he migrated from New York in 2003. He currently is an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore where he researches the impact of hot and wet envelopes as well. Due to Singapore is one of the equatorial’s city, so Erik gave himself a practice to explore how architecture forms and atmosphere might respond to this kind of region.
Meanwhile, Erik has been announced as the winner of the 2015 Wheelwright Prize, a $100,000 travel grant for his proposal, Hot and Wet: The Equatorial City and the Architectures of Atmosphere, which focuses on the architecture of five dense cities in the equatorial zone – Jakarta, Indonesia; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Pondicherry, India; Lagos, Nigeria; Sao Paulo, Brazil. These cities will become for Erik examine traditional and modern building strategies that mediate extreme climate conditions while addressing the mounting pressures of rapid urbanization and climate change.
‘Hot and wet’ is a common climate in an equatorial city that most of designers neglect, but for Erik who came from a humid subtropical climate country, it become one of the concept or even consideration in Erik’s every designs. He also argue that, ‘this is not simple thermal performance that we often discussed in tropical circles but really how architecture constructs perceptible atmosphere in space. He always providing compelling atmospheres to inhabit and experience by exterior envelopes that operate optically through opaque materials. Erik also authored a book to define this, which titled Deep Veils.
L’Heureux, E.G. (2014). Deep veils: Erik L’Heureux and Pencil Office. ORO Edition.
Deep Veils is an architecture monograph on veils, thickness, and envelopes in architecture as a counter narrative to transparency, openness, and clarify that underpin orthodox Modern architecture. All the projects that represented within the book define in various ways how deep veils in architecture are manifest utilizing opaque and solid materials to produce forms of translucency, depth, and hazy atmospheres.
During the PAM Public Lecture, Erik has shown us how heavy is the usage of air conditioners in Singapore. The first prime minister of Singapore even proposed that air conditioner is the best invention of the century as it is vital for the comfortability of the workers during work and increase the productivity during work in the tropical countries. It is important to consider the air ventilation in a building and not only depends on the artificial ventilation. Therefore, to Erik, it seems that combination of both natural and artificial ventilations are important in a design.
Our group have question on the frequent usage of digital fabricated veils and panels in his design, was it to solve the hot and wet climate? According to him, the digital fabrication in his design was never to solve the climate but the common usage of digital fabrication started in Singapore. It was also because of the easy construction of the digital fabrication in computer software.
A Simple Factory Building/ Pencil Office located in an industrial area of Singapore. Erik used an airy and porous structure to wraps around the building, the veil shields the building from the harsh sunlight as solar shading, deflect rain, and also allow air to circulate as freely as possible. These strategy design calibrates the performance of building as climatic engine. Besides that, Erik also shared with us his design process actually is quite simple and easy, which are wrap some kind of parabolic pattern on the simple Le Corbusier’s Domino House.
Le Corbusier’s Domino House
Axonometric of Pencil Office，
We can recognize that the middle part is alike the Domino House and add on facades.
1,000 Singapore in Venice, Italy 2010, Erik designed a 35meter long tube with lightweight ventilation blocks. The tube operates as an atmospheric straw, bringing ventilation, smell and sound from the canal to inner courtyard.
After he presented the two projects from him, we can recognize that Erik used to keep the theme between each object as the eye-catching façades wrapping on the two projects above. Because he ‘don’t believe every project starts afresh, rather, I am interested in cultivating specific approaches to design, especially surrounding ideas of veils, multiple envelopes, and atmosphere.’ From the Erik L’Heureux’s projects, I’m attract to his designs and concepts but not materials. The veils are looked nice at all, but consider about the cost or time to construct it is not that cheap. Somehow, I also wonder how many Singaporean willing to pay for this kind of veil design due to their high living cost.
But overall, I am quite enjoy in the flow of seeing Erik’s project, the amount of natural light is control very well for each spaces and the shadow of facades reflect on the floor, since I am interested in deep of lighting architecture.
